I talking about Blue Moon and our ever evolving industry. If you are in the area please do come by and say hi and sit and knit a spell in…public. Public Library kind of public!!!

There are so many anniversaries.

Simply Socks is celebrating 12 years for spreading the sock knitting love. We are joyfully celebrating with them by creating them a super exclusive colorway to go with a seriously cool mug!

So pretty together!

And we also are running an exclusive-limited-engagement yarn special. Colossal Sock is quite the yarn and quite the skein! 600 yds ( 150 grams) of lovely 100% Superwash Merino with a nice twist that makes it good for socks or shawls or hats or gloves or baby knits. It’s got a nice boing factor which we love and a nice light hand.

Happy Anniversary to Allison and her lovely team!!

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Twisted is celebrating 10 years of supplying the greater Portland metro area with all kinds of fiber related goodness and fun. And we are pleased as punch to being joing in the festivities!!!

We’ve created them a very very special colorway to commemorate the occasion.

Twisted’s 10th Anniversary Speck-tacular!! I love this colorway so much. It just makes me happy. I took the ball of yarn graphic part of their logo and blew it up so I could pick out all the colors and then I speckled the heck out of a few skeins of yarn with them. They are exclusive to Twisted so check out their website for pre-orders and of course there will be some at Twisted next week!! Along With Maggie and I who will be there to chat and take pictures with the photo-booth and I will bring my color fortune telling mojo. It’s going to be all kinds of fun. Please bring your Blue Moon knit and especially socks for pics!!!

Happy Anniversary Twisted!!!! You’re the bomb!

Okay so I was supposed to announce winners last week and well to be honest it took me longer to recover from birthday celebrating than I thought. Also it just kept going and going!

Thank you all so much for playing along. You brightened my week so very much!

Here are “I made it to 60 bitches” birthday give-away winners!

Here’s a pic of the wonderful and super sassy mugs from the oh so lovely and talented ladies at JaMpdx!

So this is not written in stone. If you want a bag and not a mug just let me know. I do have 6 mugs and 4 bags. I am picking up bags today and will add a picture of them when I do. Thanks so much for playing along. I will email all of you this weekend with choices and such. Thank you for playing along!

and…. then Ashley H, Pedora1, Tinkingbell and stephi gordon I will be cooking up some colorways for you in the next few weeks! Love your color stories. Thanks for taking the time to share!

Phew….that is a whole lot.

We got a little backed up with orders from all of this. We will be shipping most of them out on Monday!!!

I am in the place of my heart for 5 whole days!! Seriously happy and can think of no better way to celebrate 60 years of being. Going to spend a whole lot of time walking on the beach and communing with my friend the ocean and playing with my buddies Karen and Michael. Yup, pretty happy.

Stitch Lord

” I made it to 60 bitches!”

I AM GROOT!

Guardians of the Skeins

Darn Ewe

Clusterfact

Pinky Cold Medina

Delilah Dixie Tipsy

Emma’s Daydream

New colorways are up!!!! ( Actually I thought they were but they are not. They will be in a few hours)

I am a big Guardians of the Galaxy fan so of course I had to translate that love onto yarn! I have been torturing everyone I know with ” I am Groot” texts. Baby Groot is beyond charming and seriously adorable!

I have also added a new Tipsy to our Tipsy Clan, Delilah Dixie Tipsy. Delilah Dixie has a a fiery rebellious streak that is sure to burn a little if you happen get on her wrong side. Otherwise she is loyal to a fault and the fiercest friend a girl could ask for!

And.. last but not least my ” I made it to 60 bitches!” birthday colorway.

” I made it to 60 bitches!”

As usual there’s a bit of the back story on this one based on a text exchange with Shannon.

I went with it! Stared with the color that flows through my veins Pond Scum and added it’s bestie Deep Unrelenting Grey and then went from there riding the line between muddy and sassy! I think I got it. I love it quite a bit and…it goes with last years birthday colorway depraveDyer’s Birthday Sprinkles pretty well and is most definitely pond-scummy dirty as Shanno suggested.

See?!!!

The mug is one of the mugs in our giveaway!!!

I am reposting the fun and games info from last week!!!

Okay now unto the fact that on May 29th I turn 60 years old. I know…how did that happen. Actually I am pretty thrilled to be here to turn 60 so I am celebrating with everything that I have and I would love for you to join me. Some of what I have a lot of is, love and gratitude laced with a fair bit of quirky. So we are going to be spreading both of these around in the next week.

One of the ways we are going to do this is that everyone person who order from this moment in time until midnight May 31st gets a love note postcard from me in their package with a 10% off coupon good for your next order! We will also be randomly choosing from all of those orders 6 of you that win a skein of Socks that Rock of your choosing in a wonderful JAMPDX mug. We will also be choosing another 4 that will win a skein of our Yaksi Fingeringweight yarn in the color of your choice in a lovely Queen Bee bag! I know! I totally want to win these!

And…if that were not enough and it is not. We are also doing daily instagram giveaways with sharing themes like favo color and movies and such. Here is our instagram feed.

It’s been awhile since we had a tell me your color story and I will make you a colorway game so we are going to do that here on the blog.

What you do is tell me a color story. I love a good story!!! I am not going to give you any limits this time. It can be any kind of story as long as you are descriptive.

Try not to make it too long. I am in the process of training three new dyers so my attention span is a little low at the end of the day. Also that whole turning 60 thing!! You have until June 1st. Then I will choose 4 of these stories and I will create them in living color on yarn and then send you a skein!!

Well I was going to start this post all about turning 60 and everything that goes along with that but then I walked outside and noticed very, very bad smell.

I am pretty sure that either there was a skunk incident on my front porch last night and it was afraid and then let it’s fear fly or it crawled under my porch and died or ( and this makes me wanna cry ) a skunk has decided to nest under my porch.

I am seriously hoping it is not the latter. I have a small dog and three cats and the chickens and the cats would surely get sprayed and then there’s the fact that skunks really really like chickens. Oy. So this weekend I get to figure this all out. I have my fingers crossed and am hoping the smell goes away and that is the end of it.

So a few newsy things first. If you are a Rockin’ Whorl Club member we were going to ship out early in the week by the locks were not dry. It has taken all week for them to dry and I have a huge dehumidifier in the dye barn. I am to blame I thought I had previously washed these but I had not! Anyway we will be packing it all up this weekend and shipping it out to you on Monday! Thank you for your patience!

As I mentioned in last weeks newsletter our new price list will be going into effect on June 19th.

Rockin’ Sock Club members you might want to use your 20% off coupon code before the 19th to take advantage of the current prices. we are raising prices a ton but every little bit helps.

We have a few specials going on right now.

We have TREATYOURMOMSELF 15% off good until Monday May 22nd and…

springtwistalong 25% off our Seduction and La Luna Lace for the Spring Hiatus Twist KAL good until June 1st.

And then starting June 1 we have our Tour de Sock KAL discount which is good from June 1st to July first and you can find once you sign up for the KAL.

Also I made two new colorways for this years Tour de Sock. I hope you love them as much as I do. I’m having a whole lot of fun with orange right now! One of the new colorways I am putting up next week is a new Tipsy colorway, an orange one!!

It time for a color change!!

Here’s a list of the colorways that are going to have a bit of a vacation starting Monday!

Okay now unto the fact that on May 29th I turn 60 years old. I know…how did that happen. Actually I am pretty thrilled to be here to turn 60 so I am celebrating with everything that I have and I would love for you to join me. Some of what I have a lot of is, love and gratitude laced with a fair bit of quirky. So we are going to be spreading both of these around in the next week.

One of the ways we are going to do this is that everyone person who order from this moment in time until midnight May 31st gets a love note postcard from me in their package with a 10% off coupon good for your next order! We will also be randomly choosing from all of those orders 6 of you that win a skein of Socks that Rock of your choosing in a wonderful JAMPDX mug. We will also be choosing another 4 that will win a skein of our Yaksi Fingeringweight yarn in the color of your choice in a lovely Queen Bee bag! I know! I totally want to win these!

And…if that were not enough and it is not. I would like to play an instagram game I just have not quite figured it out yet so stay tuned in the next few days for that! Here is our instagram feed.

It’s been awhile since we had a tell me your color story and I will make you a colorway game so we are going to do that here on the blog.

What you do is tell me a color story. I love a good story!!! I am not going to give you any limits this time. It can be any kind of story as long as you are descriptive.

Try not to make it too long. I am in the process of training three new dyers so my attention span is a little low at the end of the day. Also that whole turning 60 thing!! You have until June 1st. Then I will choose 4 of these stories and I will create them in living color on yarn.

Unfortunately we are a little late to the party but, I still could not resist joining in the color combining fun. Here are a few of the color quintets that we have put together based on Joji’s color scheme. I think any of our fingering weight yarns would work but… really I like the idea of such a big piece like like this seems to be knit with our Featherlight yarn.

When ordering if you want your yarn asap please only order the yarn you need for this and you will get it sooner! Oh, and if you have yarn you want to use in your stash and need help with color additions please let me know! info@bluemoonfiberarts.com

We have not kitted these up so you order them separately which gives you more choice.

My buddy Toni Neil of the The Fold has a booth ( barn 3, booth 18) chocked full of Blue Moon yarn. We sent here the new bases Cake and La Luna both. She has most of the Buffy colorways in Socks that Rock and in Super Sparkle and Yaksi Fingering with coordinating shaded solids in Cloud Nine in case you want to join our SLAY ME KAL!!

Stop by and say hi to Toni and her wonderful crew!! I am so very grateful to Toni for being Blue Moon’s absolutely wonderful rep at shows and most especially this one.

If you are not going to be at Maryland and are feeling a little low over it do not fret we have so much going on you will not feel left out.

Of course we have the SLAY ME Kal with Shannon that is going on. It has started but hey, it is never too late to join the fun.

I am so loving all of the Buffy combo’s. This Angelus one with the contrasting color in Robin’s Egg Blue – Cloud Nine just makes me happy!

So Pretty! I love this shawl Shannon. Buffy would be proud!!

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Speaking of KALS… . Twist Collective is on a Spring Hiatus and they are sponsoring a KAL. We are bug Twist Collective fans so we thought we would join the fun. The idea is you choose a favorite design from the magazine to knit, then to sign-up on their FB page and RAV group to join the collective fun. Oh and Kate has posted that their are prizes!! I think you have to post to facebook to be eligible for those.

One of my all time favorite designs from Twist Collective is the stellar Celestarium by Audry Nicklin from the Winter 2012 issue and knit in our Seduction yarn in a Raven colorway. If you missed this piece of constellation knit wonder when it was first published than now you get another chance to knit and then wear this beauty of a shawl.

Photo Credit: Jane Heller

We are offering a 25 % discount on Seduction and our La Luna Lace for the month of May. The discount code is: springtwistalong is in effect until June 1st. What better time to knit the night sky than during the Spring and Summer when we are out enjoying it? Our very own Maggie will knit-a-long with whoever wants to joins the fun.

Photo Credit: Jane Heller

Okay…one more KAL to go for this post at least.

I am sure you’ve all seen that Joji has a new MKAL coming up very very soon, Starting Point. We are a little late to the party but could not resist joining in the color combining fun. If you look in the header you will see a few of the color quintets we have put together. I think any of our fingering weight yarns would work but… really I like the idea of such a big piece like like this seems to be knit with our Featherlight yarn.

When ordering if you want your yarn asap please only order the yarn you need for this and you will get it sooner! Oh, and if you have yarn you want to use in your stash and need help with color additions please let me know! info@bluemoonfiberarts.com

It feels like a long time since I posted. I don’t think it actually has been it just feels that way. Life has been full and busy and a little crazy and when that is the case time seems to flow quite rapidly.

I have a lot to I want to talk about so I am going to jump right in.

The barn is just humming along with all kinds of color joy. We are busy dyeing all of your beautiful color combo’s for the Buffy KAL. We’ve already shipped out some of the early bird orders and will be shipping more out tomorrow and Monday. If you would like to join our slayer of a KAL there is still time. The 15% coupon code ( which you get when you purchase the pattern) doesn’t expire until this weekend on the 22nd which gives us plenty of time to get you your yarn for Shannon’s May cast-on date.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you all love my Buffy colorways as much as I do. I love that some of you are ordering the whole set. I would too. I might be keep the set I used for the photos in a nice safe place where I can see them. I did the same thing with the Ravens. Actually I still have the original set of Ravens.

Anyway Shannon and her lovely husband Stefan took some seriously fun photos. I so wish I could have been in on that photo shoot!

Okay so I know I promised a Dye Class/Camp Schedule quite awhile ago. I am in the process. I just have some family stuff I need to work around so I have been trying to firm that up before posting dates.

We will be having our yearly Dye Days and Barn Sale in early August this year.

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In early July ( 6-9) I will be on Bainbridge Island at the magical Islandwood with Lorilee Beltman teaching eco printing!!! I know. Pretty exciting.

Join me as we explore the magical alchemy that is color on fiber with plants. In this three-hour class we are going to be experimenting with Eco Printing, otherwise know as “botanical contact printing”.

Petals, berries, seeds, bark, leaves, roots and stems hold all sorts of color mysteries. We are going to explore these mysteries with some creative mordanting and a little steam on: a cotton hanky, a wool yarn blank and also a skein of silk blend yarn. I seriously can’t think of a better place to learn more about plant color and printing than on the island oasis that is Island Wood.

What you need for this class is a sense of adventure, a love of color and an apron or a t-shirt that you don’t mind getting messy. Dyeing is a creative messy business!

You will leave with a new appreciation of the plants and a hanky, yarn blank and skein as affirmation that you can knit and wear! Since our time is going to be full of dyeing we will also provide you with a set with class notes.

Lorilee has all kinds of other knit fun planned. Plus great food and a cooking class and …s’mores in a stunning place with wonderful people!

As promised a few colorway pairing ideas for our Buffy knit-a-long. Shannon and I spent the day today playing matchy~matchy with skeins of yarn. It is the best kind of game!

On the top row of each photo is our Buffy colorway in Super Sparkle and Yaksi Fingering-weight. Right underneath are the shaded solids we have carefully chosen that we feel make our Buffy colorways and Shannon’s design sparkle! Oh and the list of colorway names moves from the left to the right of the photo!

If none of these float your boat then please do email info@bluemoonfiberarts.com and I will do my very best to help you choose the colorway that makes you feel like the chosen one.

Click on each picture to make them bigger and see the color a little better.

Okay for those of you that are not Buffy fans please know that at the end of this blog post there are other new colorways.

Now…for those of you that are Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) fans then guess what? We are going to celebrate the 20 year Anniversary of Joss Whedon’s genius series full of wonderful characters and story as we do, with a ton of color and a knit-a-long.

I am seriously excited. I have been driving team Blue Moon nuts with all of my creative musings and tweaking. There was all kinds of creative questioning form me. Things like, “Oh no, this skein does not really do Spike justice. Do you think this skein looks like Spike? I do not think this skein looks like Spike. How am I going to make this look like Spike? Maybe I need a drink.” Or… “there is definitely not enough darkness in the dark side of Angel’s colorway and how do I make Giles a colorway that does him justice but it translate to shawl and is smart?” and on and on and on it went.

I stopped at 12 but I am totally adding to this because we need Cordelia and Faith and…oh my goodness how did I not do Faith this time around? You see how this has been.

Seriously fun and I have to say I am pretty tickled to have my very own Scooby Gang of yarn!

I want to know them all. I want Spike socks so bad that as soon as I am done with the picture taking I am balling up the skein, casting on and watching some Buffy. I might have a thing for Spike!

Okay…I told you excited!!

When I realized in February that this year was the 20th Anniversary of our beloved slayer, I asked another die-hard Buffy fan if she would like join me in a bit of a knit-homage to Buffy and of course, Shannon said yes. And as it is with these things here we are!

SLAY ME KAL
As I said Shannon and I decided to celebrate all of this evil goodness by doing what we do best: I design a bunch of Buffy-themed colorways, She designs a Buffy-inspired shawl.

We both are particularly tickled about the colorway that inspired the design and how we are using it. The same, Buffy-inspired colorway, two ways: one in Super Sparkle, one in Yaksi Fingering. The yarns take the dye in two very different, and delightful, ways. So we get to see how that plays out since the Yaksi starts out a greyish brown all colr we put on it it darker and a little muted. Shannon and I both have a little bit of a thing for Yaksi!

Our Slayer KAL begins May 1st, and the pattern will be released sometime before then. We are putting up the yarn for pre-sale now so we can all knit together this Spring as we re-watch Buffy (and Angel, don’t forget about Angel!).
Order by April 21st, and you get a 15% discount on all three skeins of the yarn. Discount information is included in the pdf you get when you purchase the pattern from Shannon as well as lots more information about the KAL.
You can find the info here on Shannon’s blog and the pattern page is here Rav page

We are not selling these as kits. This way you can choose the shaded solid that works best with whatever Buffy colorway/character you choose!

And when you order you order you Buffy character colorway in both Super Sparkle and Yaksi Fingering.

Below you will find all of the Buffy character-colorways! Starting this weekend I will be posting combinations to instagram.

As always if you need color help please do email me. info@bluemoonfiberarts.com. I love to help with color choosing.

Here is my version of the Scooby Gang in all of their glory! I hope you like knitting with them as much as I like dreaming them up.

“In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the slayer.”-Joss Whedon

Angelus

Sunnydale

Buffy

Giles

Anyanka

Xander

Willow

Slayer

Bite Me!!

Drusilla

Spike

Hush

Oh my goodness there are enough Buffy colorways for a throw!!!

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Other new colrways you will find on the website.

In the Multicolorway Category we have: Scumble Bumble, MurkyCHI and Leapfrog. All the rest of them are in the BeSpeckled cstegory.

Wallflower

SunSpots

Scumble Bumble

Release the bats

Plumpy SunAngel

Murky CHI

Leapfrog

Goodbye Kitty

Frogs and Pickles

A Whiter Shade of Pale

Okay I am sure I left thing out but I need to post this before the newsletter goes out.

There is also a fair amount of happy dancing because our new yarns are here. We have been testing them, as we do, with color and stitches and needles and turkey basters (the dye part).

La Luna is made from our good and steady friend the Merino sheep and not just any Merino sheep but an, oh so ultra-fine, super soft Merino with a micron count of 19. The only way I can envision finding a more magical fiber is if one were able to collect unicorn down under a full moon and not just any full moon but a full blue moon! Yup, that would be the only way.

Oh wait…let’s throw in a little Mulberry Silk cause why the hell not?! No reason not to and lots of reason to add in a little sheen and strength to that fine Merino.

A magical blend for sure! So much so that of course there had to be 3 different yarns, in 3 different weights. See why all the happy dancing.

La Luna Lace ( Colorway: ChamPlum)

La Luna Fingering ( Colorway: Lean Mean Aubergine)

La Luna Dk ( Colorway: Calendula)

The lace-weight is a 2 ply and is a bit heavier and tightly plied then mostly lace weight yarns.

Same is true for the 3 ply fingering weight version of La Luna. Tightly plied and just a bit heavier than the traditional fingering weight. Although as I type that I think that it is probably pretty comparable to Socks that Rock which definitely did not start out as a traditional fingering weight yarn.

I love the ply on all three of these yarns and the stitch definition it gives the fabric. The DK La Luna is just down right dreamy! These are from the same mill that spins Crackpaca! They do such a beautiful job.

We are offering all three of these beauties at an introductory 27.00 for a small window of time so more of us can give them a knit. We had them at the yarn tasting at Twisted last weekend as part of the Rose City Yarn Crawl and they were a big hit!

Along with new yarns we have been slowly adding new colors here and there. We have some new shaded solids that I am loving.

Electric Blue, DesAqua, Lean Mean Aubergine and Calendula!

I am head over heels for the Calendula. We also have ChamPlum which is the color the La Luna Lace is pictured in above.

As of this moment in time we are caught up on all website orders!!!!!!!!

Thanks to my team for just busting it out of here the past few weeks!

We are probably going to close sign-ups for the Rockin’ Sock Club for the year very soon. So if you want to be a part of the Sock Opera madness this is last your chance.

To those of you requesting class info. I will be putting those up next week. I was not sure of my schedule so did not want to put up classes until I was sure I would be here.

Thank you so to all of you lovely knitters that came to see us at Twisted last weekend. We had so much fun and it was just really great to see all of you!

Oh I almost forgot…stay tuned next week for a big ol’ KAL announcement!

Hey there! Remember me?
I know, it’s been awhile.
Life has been pretty intense in Blue Moonland trying to catch up on orders, stay sane (hahahaha) and stay ahead of whatever craziness Mother Nature has decided to throw our way. I can tell you I have lived here for almost 20 years and have never experienced a winter like this one, and you know what? I would really be okay with this all having been an anomaly. Fingers crossed.

So, first things first. We are just about caught up on orders. Yay!!!!
Thank you all so very much for your understanding and patience. I have said it before ~ Blue Moon has the most wonderful knitters!!!

We have worked with the Twistedista’s again this year on RCYC exclusive colorways created for the theme. This year’s theme Portland Pastimes was really fun to create colorways for. Twisted chose as their pastimes ~ “Standing in line for brunch.” and “Dressing to match your pet.”

I am so very tickled with the colorways and names we came up with for these two fun themes.

Of course, Standing in line for brunch had to be Breakfast Club!!! One of my all time favorite movies, so full of teenage angst. What’s not to love? Also, it could not be more Portland! I took hues from Bender, Claire, Andy, Allison and Brian’s wardrobe and them altogether for a very Portland Breakfast Club colorway! Don’t you think?
Look the perfect pairing!

Queuing By Kat Archer
I truly love this cowl and think we might need a Breakfast Club Queuing KAL! Anyone game?

Our next colorway was a bit harder to come up with. Dressing to match your pet. Hmmm…. I decided on speckles and because PDX does love it dogs I went canine instead of feline. Shh..don’t tell my cats!

Here we have for you knitting pleasure, Dress Like Your Pet! Brown and black speckles on white with some a little splash of Aqua because it’s Portland and we are all about the water here in the Pacific Northwest!

I love Megan’s design. I pretty much love everything Megan designs. I find her crochet intriguing enough to make me want to give it a go but, I know better. I have tried. I have a thing for granny squares so… so I have tried a square or 20. It’s not pretty. I am sad to say that my granny squares are not square and would put my granny to shame.
Anyway, I digress.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts Yarn Tasting,
Sock Show n’ Tell & Color Fortune Telling
with me
Saturday, March 4 from 10:00-4:00pm
Take a moment out of your hectic shopping schedule to stop in and say hi, maybe sample a yarn or two with Maggie and myself. We would so love to see you and your socks or anyone other blue moon knit show and tell you might have!! We will be bringing some new yarns for you to see and test and some new colorways too!! I am also going to wear my Color Witch hat for some fun and insightful color readings! Come see what the color cards have in to say!
We can do sock, knitter and dyer selfies if you like and just have a colorful time.

All Pop-Up Events will be held at the Twisted Annex – 2239 NE Broadway, a bright yellow building with turquoise trim diagonally across the street from Twisted’s main shop. Please be safe: We strongly recommend taking advantage of the signaled crosswalk at the intersection of NE Broadway and 24th when traveling between Twisted and our classroom annex.

So much….

Okay a few more things before I go outside and enjoy the actual sunshine that is out today. So strange yesterday there were snow flurries all day and today it’s sunshine!

Next week, Shannon Squire’s new Socks for Busy B’s 2 collection is hitting the streets, and Socks that Rock is playing a starring role! Three sock patterns, each one both toe-up AND cuff-down, in a wide range of sizes. PLUS, a bonus 2-week discount on your favorite sock yarns. Shannon will announce the collection on Instagram and her newsletter.